"So do I." She fastened the cloak at her throat. "But I will not stand in this house while you decide whether I am a woman who saved Blackmir or a woman clever enough to steal from it."
"Where are you going?"
"Home."
"And the accounts?"
"Find someone you trust."
She walked to the door. Nathaniel's voice stopped her. "I trusted your judgment before I knew anything else about you."
Eleanor looked back, pain visible only in the stillness of her face. "That is why your hesitation mattered."
Then she left.
For several seconds, Nathaniel listened to her footsteps recede down the corridor. Samuel entered through the adjoining door holding an old registry book.
"Your Grace."
Nathaniel did not turn. "Not now."
"I think it must be now."
Samuel placed the book on the desk and opened it to a faded entry. Nathaniel read the registered proprietor of Reed Agricultural Supply. His expression changed.
"Mercer."
"No, Your Grace." Samuel swallowed. "His wife."
"His wife." Nathaniel turned from the registry.
"Margaret Mercer." Samuel touched the faded entry with one finger. "Registered under her maiden name, Margaret Vale, then amended after marriage. The company ceased trading three years ago."
Nathaniel's jaw tightened. "So Mercer directed Blackmir purchases toward a company his wife owned, disguised payments under Henry Reed's name, and intercepted Eleanor's letters when she began asking questions."
"It appears so."
"'Appears' is not enough." Nathaniel looked toward the window where Eleanor had disappeared into the gray afternoon. "Not anymore."
Eleanor did not return to Blackmir the next day, or the next. She worked at her cottage table while whispers traveled faster than winter rain. Mrs. Carter brought bread and indignation. A farmer quietly offered to tell anyone who asked that Eleanor had never taken a penny from him. Eleanor thanked them both and asked them to say nothing they could not prove.
On the third morning, a letter arrived from a solicitor representing a neighboring estate. He had heard of her work reorganizing Blackmir's winter accounts and offered her paid employment assisting with tenant records. It was modest, respectable, and entirely separate from Nathaniel Ashford.
Eleanor read it twice. Freedom, she discovered, could fit on one sheet of paper.
She was reaching for ink when she noticed something on the back of the forged Blackmir authorization Samuel had allowed her to copy: a tiny reference number beside the payment date.
She froze.
She had seen the same notation before—not in Blackmir's ledgers, but on an old grain receipt her father had kept because he disputed the weight delivered. Eleanor opened the wooden chest beneath her window and searched through Henry Reed's remaining papers. The receipt was there, folded between rent notices: same number, same merchant, different amount.
Her heartbeat quickened. Mercer had not merely borrowed Henry Reed's name. He had attached false payments to genuine transactions, making the fraud almost impossible to detect unless someone possessed both sides of the record.
Eleanor looked at the solicitor's offer. If she accepted it and left Blackmir now, the gossip might fade. She could build a life where no Duke's hesitation had the power to wound her.
Then she looked at her father's receipt.
By dusk, she was walking through Blackmir's front doors. Samuel found her first.
"Miss Reed!" Relief softened his entire face. "His Grace is in the library."
"I did not come for His Grace."
Nathaniel heard her anyway. He appeared at the end of the corridor, coat discarded, shirtsleeves visible beneath his dark waistcoat. For a moment, neither moved.
"Eleanor."
Her name sounded different in his voice now. She hated that she still noticed. She held up the receipt. "My father kept this."
Nathaniel approached but stopped several feet away. "What is it?"